Canning or Dehydrating – Which is Best for Prepping?

So, you’ve got a big batch of vegetables from your non-GMO garden that you can’t possibly eat before they go bad…what to do?  Do you can them?  Dehydrate them?  Which method is best?  Which is easier?  Which has the longest shelf life?  Which has the most nutrition, or the best flavor, or is the least expensive?

I’m going to take a shot at answering at least some of these questions, and hopefully help some folks along the way.  Keep in mind that I am not an expert or a nutritionist or even a very smart guy.  But, I’ve been around the block a few times and have picked up a thing or two along the way and what you are about to read is mostly my personal opinions, and the reasons behind them.

Let’s start with which method is best.  The short answer is, it depends.  If we had the chance to ask my great-grandmother (rest her soul) which is best, she would tell you without hesitation that canning is definitely the best, hands down, no arguing the point.  “I’m not going to eat some tiny little shriveled up chunk of apple that looks like a piece of leather”, would likely have been her response to the notion of eating a dehydrated apple slice.

And, in a way, she’s right.  If you prefer the more natural looking, eat-it-out-of-the-jar type of food storage, then canning is the way to go.  Canned food is very juicy and tasty, and retains much of the food’s original look and texture.  If someone were to give you a plate with a canned tomato and a dehydrated tomato side by side, it’s a sure bet that you will gobble down the canned tomato while you look at the dehydrated tomato with a skeptical leer.

So, canning is the way to go, right?

Whoa there, wait a minute, there is still much of the story to tell.  While canning may have it’s place in the food storage pantry, let’s take a closer look and keep the comparison going.

Canning takes a lot of prep time, as well as cooking/canning time.  You have to purchase case after case of Mason jars, rings and lids, along with a giant canning pot with a wire rack, and some tongs for pulling the hot jars out of the water.  These are not insurmountable obstacles, but there is a lot of work and expense involved in canning.  And let’s not forget the amount of heat that canning generates in your home.  Most people have to do their canning in the summer time when the vegetables are fresh and ready, with their kitchens heating up with pot after pot of boiling water and row upon row of hot jars cooling down on the counter, constantly checking the temperature of the water and jars to make sure everything is just right.

Canning is a hot, labor intensive business.

Dehydrating, on the other hand, is far easier than canning.  It’s as simple as slicing up your vegetables (or whatever it is you’re dehydrating), placing the slices on the dehydrating rack, turning on the machine and walking away.  That’s pretty much it.

Yes, dehydrating is definitely easier than canning, but it’s not free.  You have to buy a dehydrator (or build an outdoor solar dehydrator), which can cost you anywhere from $40 to $300, depending on the type you want.  Then, you need somewhere to store all of your dehydrated foods, since, unlike canning, once the food is dehydrated you have to transfer it to a storage container.  I highly recommend vacuum sealing all of your dehydrated food, which means you will need a vacuum sealing machine.  These can be had for an additional $40 to $200, plus the cost of the vacuum bags (bags can be found on ebay a LOT cheaper than in the stores).  This added expense is well worth the money, because vacuum sealed dehydrated food will last for a very, very long time.

So, both methods carry a significant start up cost with them, you will need to keep replacing the rings and lids for your canning jars and you will need to keep buying vacuum sealer bags for the dehydrated foods.  Cost-wise, neither method is really better than the other.  So lets keep digging and look a little further.

What about nutrition?  Which method retains the highest original nutrient content?

This one is easy.  Dehydrating wins, hands down.  Dehydrated foods retain almost all of their natural nutrients, while canning destroys much of the nutrition value of almost any food.  Anytime you heat food, especially to high temperatures, you lose a huge amount of the nutrients.  With dehydrating, the nutrient content remains locked in the food because the only thing that is taken away is the water, or moisture.  Once the food is re-hydrated, it will be as nutrient rich as when it was fresh.

And then there’s shelf life.  Shelf life is a very important factor to preppers, since no one knows when the SHTF will start or end.  The longer food is able to be stored safely, the better the chance for long term survival.

What is the shelf life of home canned foods?  It depends, really, on four simple factors (the same factors are true for dehydrated foods, too).  Stored foods biggest enemies are Temperature, Moisture, Oxygen and Light.  With temperature, the cooler the better.  For every 10 degrees of temperature drop in your storage environment, your food will increase its storage life dramatically.  At the same time, the lower the moisture content in your pantry the longer your food will last.  Then, if you can keep the oxygen from coming in contact with your food, the better off you will be.  And finally, keep your food in the dark.  Many foods react to light and begin to break down at a cellular level, losing much of its vitamin content.

These four factors, and the variables they represent, is why it is so difficult to give an accurate number for years of shelf life of any food.  In general, most people will tell you that home canned food will last a year, and some people say up to ten years (depending on the food and how it was canned).

Dehydrated food, with a moisture content of less than 10% (the drier the better), vacuum sealed and kept in a dark, cool place will typically last a lot longer than most canned foods (though some will argue that this is not true).

What about storing the food?  Which method takes up less space?  Or is the easiest to store?

Again, dehydrating takes the cake.  Dehydrated foods are shrunk down to less than half of their original size, making it easy to store a lot of them in one single vacuum sealer bag.  When you open a jar of canned vegetables, you may get one or two meals worth of food, but when you open a gallon size vacuum sealed bag of dehydrated vegetables, you may get 5 or 6 meals, possibly more.  And dehydrated foods are very lightweight, while canned foods are terribly heavy and require sturdy shelving to store them safely.  If the shelves collapse under the weight, the jars will shatter and your precious food stores will be lost.  If you drop a bag of dehydrated vegetables….no big deal, pick it up and put it back on the shelf.  No harm, no foul.

What about taste?  Again, most people will like the flavor of a re-hydrated food better than a canned food, simply because it has retained almost all of it’s original content.  The texture may not be the same, sometimes a re-hydrated food can be a little mushy, but the flavor is fantastic.

All in all, in my non-expert, learned-from-living opinion, dehydrating is the way to go.  It’s easy, lasts longer, is more nutritious, tastes better and is easier to store.  I threw out my canning supplies years ago, but my dehydrator runs nearly all the time.

I can hear the soft, reassuring hum of its fan whirring in the background right now.  :)